Category Archives: News

2 Cleantech Companies With Pune Links Make Us Proud

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(This is an email that Anil Paranjape sent to the PuneStartups. It is reproduced here with permission.)

Two emerging cleantech companies with very strong links to Pune have made us proud recently.

Pune based ‘First Energy’, one of the pioneers in the clean burning stoves business, was recently chosen as one of the ‘Technology Pioneers of 2012’ by none other than the World Economic Forum. This honor was bestowed on only 25 startups world-wide! Big congratulations to Mahesh Yagnaraman and First Energy. The announcement can be found here

In other news, ‘PK Clean’, a plastic waste-to-oil startup, took the runners-up prize in the ‘CleanTechOpen 2011’! They also took the grand prize in the ‘Air-Wast-Water’ category. CleanTechOpen is considered the ‘Academy Awards of Cleantech’, choosing the most innovative and impactful cleantech companies from the US. ‘PK Clean’ has a very strong Pune link: we are their proving ground. Their pilot plant is based here and their founder, Priyanka Bakaya, is originally from Pune with strong family ties here. Big congratulations are also in order to ‘PK Clean’ and Priyanka! More details can be found here

I am sure ‘PK Clean’ and ‘First Energy’ will add to the likes of Praj, Suzlon, Thermax etc, companies that are worldwide leaders in CleanTech and call Pune their home! No other city/industrial cluster in India can boast of this distinction!

In another little news, I’m sure a harbinger of more great news to come, Pune-originated ‘Carbon Clean Solutions’ (or CCS for short) was recently invited to attend World Economic Forum. Looks like tomorrow’s great cleantech companies have two things in common (besides strong technologies and founders): they have very strong Pune links and they all have ‘at-least-two-word-names-with-spaces-in-them’ 🙂 Maybe CCS should relocate back to Pune, they have a leg up with a three-word name! Hint, Hint, Aniruddha Sharma!

Encrypted Video Distribution Platform Idea, L3, wins Wipro-Wharton Award

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A new idea for a video distribution platform called L3, by Pune’s Prof. Anil Gupte, has won the “best Customer-centric New Idea” award in the Wipro-Wharton Innovation Tournament, 2011.

Here is a video of Anil Gupte giving an overview of L3:

If you don’t see a video above, click here to see it on YouTube

L3 has received multiple awards this year, including:

  • Selected as on of the top 5 finalists in the Economic Times Power of Ideas Competition conducted by the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), IIM Ahmedabad. CIIE along with Dr. Narayan Murthy extended Seed Funding to this venture.
  • Selected as one of the Category Winner at the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program.
  • Selected as one of the Red Herring Global 100 (Innovative ideas and ventures).
  • Winner of the Wipro-Wharton Global Innovation Challenge in the category of New Consumer-Centric Innovations, felicitated at the Wharton campus.

Prof. Gupte is part of the senior management team at Amplify Mindware, a group of educational institutions that are part of the Bharati Vidyapeeth family.

The Pune Effect or Why every technology conference must come to Pune

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“The Pune Effect: Any tech (un-)conference that happens in multiple cities in India will have its highest attendance when it comes to Pune”

It probably started in Sept, 2008, when PHPCamp got 1200+ online registrations, and 700+ people actually turned up, making it the largest unconference in India.

The following year, we organized an “Internship Mela” for students looking for internships amongst Pune’s startups, and we had to turn away 100s of students from the gates after we somehow managed to accommodate 800+.

Over the years, this trend has continued.

When DocType HTML5 came to Pune, the organizers had to shut down registrations after getting more than 600 registrations.

In July 2011, organizers of the Java 7 Launch event in Pune had to hastily shift the venue of the event to a larger hall when, unexpectedly, 400+ people registered unexpectedly

When we organized PyCon Pune, the International Python Conference, we were expecting it to be much smaller than the first two PyCon’s that were held in Bangalore, since the Python community in Bangalore is much stronger. However, once again, we had to close registrations after the number of paid registrations hit 650, since the venue wouldn’t take any more. Raymond Hettinger tweeted that this was probably the biggest PyCon outside the US.

Once is happenstance. Twice is co-incidence. More than that, and it needs to be given a name and a webpage of its own. Amit Kumar Singh called it “The Pune Effect” in a tweet in response to PyCon Pune becoming the biggest PyCon outside the US.

So, this webpage is dedicated to the Pune Effect, and the amazing tech community in Pune.

And it comes with a challenge.

A challenge to all organizers of tech events in India – Why are you not in Pune? I’m looking at you, NASSCOM Product Conclave, and DrupalCamp, and Amazon AWSCamp. If you’re an organizing a tech event in India, remember that if you skip Pune, you are missing out on your largest event.

And this is also a challenge to all the techies in Pune. We have to work to maintain this reputation. Follow the PuneTech Calendar where all the tech events happening in Pune are listed (you can subscribe to get all PuneTech events sent to you via email or via RSS), and the make it a point to attend. This will definitely help your career – you become more knowledgeable, and more importantly, you get to know lots of interesting and knowledgeable people. Not only should you attend tech events, but also drag some of your shy friends with you.

The most active tech community in the country is right here in Pune. Are you a part of it?

Pune’s Anil Paranjape joins cleantech fund Infuse as Venture Partner

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Anil Paranjape, an active member of the Pune Tech community, one of the driving forces behind PuneCleanTech, director at FusionTech Ventures, (and owner of Grubshup Restaurant) is joining a new cleantech fund, Infuse, as a Venture Partner.

Here are details of the announcement in his own words:

I am happy to announce my association with a unique new cleantech fund: Infuse Capital. I will be helping them as a Venture Partner.

Infuse (Indian Fund for Sustainable Energy) is a new fund with some of the most influential promoters and investors in India and the world.

Infuse is anchored by MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India), DST (Department of Science and Technology, Government of India), IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, India’s most renowned business school) and BP (the global energy giant). All four of these institutions have made substantial investments in the fund.

This first close will be followed by the second close thru a few other investors: mostly institutional and a few individuals (both Indian and Global)

Infuse is an early-stage fund focused exclusively on Clean Technology companies. We believe that our influential investors (such as MNRE, DST, IIM-A, and BP) bring us the best chances of developing a good pipeline and will make the crucial difference in helping our portfolio companies thru the right policy mechanisms, technical help, unparalleled business network, and global cleantech reach. No other fund can boast of active participation and funding by such institutions. As you all know, Cleantech investments and business is very tough because many issues such as technology, talent, business models, and policies need to work together. We feel that Infuse covers all these aspects with active investments from the best and the most influential Indian and Global institutions to do that.

Besides that, Infuse is backed by a very strong advisory committee (and investment committee) consisting of some of the biggest and most successful stalwarts of Indian and Global cleantech industry.

My role with Infuse will focus on building a robust pipeline, making investments and managing the portfolio with active help to the portfolio companies. All my current associations and engagements will continue.

Infuse is now open for business (inaugurated last month by Mr. Narendra Modi who is the most forward-looking politician in India and Dr. Faroukh Abdullah, the Minister of New and Renewable Energy) and we are actively building a pipeline. If you know of entrepreneurs and/or companies working in Cleantech and could be looking for funds, please connect them to me at anil@infusecapital.in

More information is available at Infuse website.

Pune-based Druva get $12M in Series B from Nexus/Sequoia – This time its official

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Pune-based Druva software, which makes enterprise backup software, has just cosed a $12 million round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners and existing investory Sequoia. In April 2010, they had raised $5 million from Sequoia and the Indian Angel Investors.

This funding is going to be used by Druva to make a strong push into cloud-based backup. Cloud infrastructure for a bandwidth and storage intensive like backup can be a significant expense, and of course, sales and marketing too.

A few weeks back a partially inaccurate version of this story had been leaked by Economic Times and was reported by PuneTech, but we “withdrew” the story after Druva called us up and let us know that it was premature to talk about it. Talking about a company’s funding round before everything is finalized and the money is in the bank is dangerous for a number of reasons including:

  • Funding is a tricky thing and there are no guarantees until the money is in the bank. Many things can, and do go wrong. One bad day on the stock market can cause VCs to reconsider any deals that are not final.
  • From the time the startup received a term-sheet from the VC until the deal is finalized, there is usually a no shopping clause which prevents the startup from talking about the details of the deal with anybody else. This is to ensure that the startup does not use this offer to try and create a bidding war between VCs. Hence, if the details leak out the VCs might feel that the startup is trying to violate the no shopping clause
  • Most importantly, if word leaks out that a VC is funding a company for amount X, then in next few days is is possible that the VC’s contacts in the industry (probably other VCs) keep saying “Why are you paying X? I don’t think it is worth more than Y?” and this can cause the VC to reconsider the deal. This is very dangerous for the startup.

This time however, the news is official (and is actually better than the deal reported by Indian Express).

As for what Druva does exactly, and why it is one of our favorite Pune companies, just read the previous article, which had a bunch of links. Here are some other interesting tidbits about Druva:

  • “Druva’s disruptive innovation reduces the storage footprint and bandwidth requirement for backup by orders of magnitude compared to other industry solutions” -Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Nexus
  • Druva, founded in 2007, has amassed more than 750 customers and protects more than 300,000 endpoints (i.e. servers, laptops, PCs) worldwide
  • InSync’s global, source-based deduplication reduces bandwidth and storage by 90 percent while providing 100 percent accuracy for Microsoft Outlook and Office applications

Here’s the full press release regarding this news

News of Druva’s funding was inaccurate and premature

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On Friday, based on an Economic Times report, we reported that Pune-based enterprise backup software provider Druva has received $10 million in funding from Nexus VP. Unfortunately this news appears to be inaccurate.

Here is a comment from Jaspreet Singh, CEO of Druva:

Thanks Navin, but this news is not very accurate. This was unethically leaked and then misreported by Peerzada (abrar.shz@timesgroup.com) of ET for some cheap thrills.

Not sure when would people this these grow up and stop screwing lives of entrepreneurs who are already fighting against all the odds.

You have been a great supporter and I would give you a call sometime next week to give accurate information and some more good news.

Basically, Druva is indeed in an advanced stage in their second round funding process, but it is not done yet, and they cannot talk about the details of the amount or the investors involved. The details that came out in the ET report are inaccurate.

We wish Druva luck, and hope to hear the official good news sometime soon.

Backup Software Provider Druva.com get $10 million funding from Nexus

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Update: It appears that the report in ET, on which this article is based, was inaccurate. Please see this update.

Pune-based startup Druva, which sells enterprise backup software, has just closed a second round of funding worth $10 million from Nexus Venture Partners, reports Economic Times.

In April 2010, Druva had raised $5 million from Sequoia and the Indian Angel Network. At that time, these are the reasons we gave for why we liked Druva:

  • Druva is a purely homegrown startup. This is not a company started by someone in the US setting up a development center in India.
  • Druva is a product startup. It is not a services company. Hence, it has a potential for exponential growth and returns.
  • Druva is not done by serial entrepreneurs. The co-founders are all first-time entrepreneurs who quit their big-company jobs to start Druva. This should give hope to all the first-time entrepreneurs in Pune.

Druva has been one of PuneTech’s favorite startups and we have covered it extensively in the past, so, frankly, there isn’t much new that we’ll be able to say about it. Instead, we’ll simply point readers to the older articles:

We also want to point out that Druva is one of the sponsors of PyCon – the International Python Conference that’s happening in Pune next month.

We wish Druva luck, and although getting another round of VC funding is not as good an indicator of success as an IPO or an acquisition, we would still like to repeat what we said in April 2010:

  • We now have in our midst a startup success story that will hopefully inspire a 100 new software product startups in Pune.

Award winning PK Clean Technologies converts waste plastic to fuel in Pune

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PK Clean Technologies, a US-based company, but whose 10000 sq.ft. pilot plant is in Pune, has just won the 3rd prize in a Business Plan Competition for environment-friendly technologies held at Rice University, Texas, USA. PK Clean has also 4 other prizes this year, including MIT’s Clean Energy Prize in 2011, and is in the running for 2 other prizes.

What does PK Clean do?

PK Clean is able to transform the most painful form of waste into the most useful type of energy.

Specifically, they can convert plastics (which get thrown in garbage) into oil. From their website:

Our vision is to turn landfilled plastics into a $7 billion annual oil market, from selling the renewable fuel we produce to refineries. PK Clean has 100% ownership over our patented catalytic depolymerization process, which is now operating in a 20 ton per day pilot facility, and our MIT team has expertise in renewable energy and oil.

PK Clean is a US-based company, but their first plant, a pilot-plant that processes 20 tons of waste plastic per day and converts it into 80 barrels of fuel has been built in Pune, says CNN

PK Clean is seeking a $4 million investment to deploy the technology in the U.S. PK Clean will need to endure a lengthy permitting process before breaking ground. Still, Bakaya believes she’ll see a plant on American soil that can process 100 tons of plastic per day by 2014.

See more coverage from Indian Express

FirstCry Pune-based Online Store for Baby Products gets $4 million funding

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FirstCry, an online portal for baby products and toys, founded by Pune’s Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha has just raised $4 million from private equity company SAIF Partners. FirstCry works with 100+ vendors internationally to make available 4000+ items for online sales, and with free shipping. As their website says:

Over time, we hope to ‘Change’ the way, Indian parents buy, so that they can be at home to spend more quality time with their ‘Little ones’ and family.

Economic times reports:

FirstCry.com receives 10,000 daily visitors and has over 15400 fans on Facebook. It has initiated various contests for parents on Facebook. The firm, which delivers to 25,000 cities and towns in India, expects to do 1000 transactions per day in next three months.

Supam Maheshwari had earlier co-founded Brainvisa in Pune, which was sold to Indecomm Global Services in 2007. Amitava Saha was a Senior Vice President at Brainvisa and had been with the company from 2003.

Solid State Storage company STEC acquires Pune’s KQ Infotech

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STEC Inc., a leader1 in solid state storage devices for the enterprise market, announced yesterday that it has a acquired KQ Infotech, a Pune based software services company.

Regular readers of PuneTech will remember KQ Infotech as the company that runs the Mentor India internship program for students interested in systems programming, and also as the company that ported Sun ZFS to Linux. KQ Infotech was started 3 years ago by ex-Veritas (Symantec) people (Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra).

STEC is a company that makes customized storage solutions based on flash (solid state) memory, and DRAM for various OEM customers like EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, LSI, etc. STEC has revenues of around $300 million, and has development centers largely in Malaysia and US. This acquisition establishes STEC’s first development center in India.

Reading from the STEC-KQ Infotech press release, and from the backgrounds of the two companies, we can make the following guesses:

  • STEC is mostly a hardware company. In order to improve the “solutions” offerings around it’s hardware, it needs some good software, and this acquisition attempts to accelerate the process of building a software team
  • Few software companies can afford to not be in India; and given the current hiring climate, it is rather difficult to build a new team from scratch in India. STEC is acquiring KQ Infotech and 30 of its employees – this gives them an “established presence” in India, and they can build on top of this.
  • One would expect KQ Infotech to go on a hiring spree in the area of storage system software.
  • KQ Infotech did not have any significant products of its own, and STEC is unlikely to be interested in KQ Infotech’s existing customers, so this is essentially an acquisition of the expertise and talent.
  • It is very likely that KQ Infotech, which is really a fairly small and new company (started just 3 years ago), was first noticed by STEC because of KQ Infotech’s ZFS port. Herein lies a lesson for other startups – porting ZFS had no direct monetary benefits to KQ Infotech, but it was a bold and “world-class” move that gave them immediate visibility all over the world (e.g. they got two mentions on slashdot‘s front page), and gave them a lot of credibility. In the words of co-founder Anand Mitra, “ZFS made an big difference in our credibility with customer. Before ZFS, our customers would ask, ‘How do you know your team is capable of this kind of work,’ but after we did ZFS, the conversation would go, ‘Clearly, you are capable, let’s talk about what we need'”

Footnote:

1: Unlike other companies which always claim to be a leader, or “leading provider of”, but are usually not, STEC actually appears to be the biggest company building solid state drives as hard disk drive replacements for the enterprise market.